


fillet (die but bonus)

by againstmygreeleaf



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aliens, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Bodily Fluids, Gen, Gore, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Mild Gore, Nudity, Vomiting, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-21 00:19:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/againstmygreeleaf/pseuds/againstmygreeleaf
Summary: Wherein a rare delicacy falls from the sky and a trio of aliens take the opportunity to present their mate with a romantic dinner.Except, well, the delicacy happens to be Hunk...Additional gratuitous, self-indulgent Hunk whump that didn't make it into the first fic.





	fillet (die but bonus)

**Author's Note:**

> More Hunk whump probably makes me look like a one trick pony. BUT here's the thing. This was almost in the first fic, some scenarios got scrapped from the first fic because I thought the blood might be a little over the top and replaced it with hugging instead. And because I tried to add a theme to the longer fic and this one sort of screwed with that idea. This isn't really something new, it's something I already wrote, only polished up and altered to stand on its own. So I'm not a one trick pony, just a recycler. I still had the doc that was almost in the other fic saved on my comp. And there still isn't a lot of Hunk whump so I guess two additions to the pool (more like puddle) that there is, isn't terrible. 
> 
> Also this one's heavier on the hurt on the hurt/comfort scale. I uh, watch a lot of horror flicks and it probably shows. And the kind of horror flicks I mean are not the suspenseful, honest-to-goodness quality chillers. I mean the goofy gore-fests that are more ridiculous than scary. Silly slashers appeal to my gallows humor. But they're over the top and this fic is too. 
> 
> "Additional Warnings" pretty much means general grossness here. That and more of me running with "make up a bunch of bullshit as long as someone suffers."

Consciousness teases Hunk in fuzzy blips before it actually settles over him, sense returning and recollection tangible.

The battle against the Galra fleet had gone south and the Yellow Lion had lost power shortly after they’d been forced to disassemble Voltron. Hunk couldn’t pilot out of the way of the blast that shot him and Yellow toward some planet. He must’ve got caught in its gravity.

Except Hunk isn’t in the Yellow Lion anymore. This recognition jolts through him like static as he realizes there’s sky above him. Sorbet pink sky, streaked with feathery clouds.

Blinking in confusion, Hunk attempts to sit up and discovers there’s nothing to sit up from. He’s not on the ground, he’s suspended between two posts. A thick, viscous substance winds around his ankles and wrists, securing him to the posts like ropes of glue. Whoever or whatever rigged him up to this also stripped him; armor, under-suit and all. He’s completely naked.

“What the…?” Hunk’s gaze darts around searchingly, alarm flaring in his chest.

Wherever he’s at appears to be tropical. Vibrant, multicolored flowers with strangely shaped petals surround him in an almost seemingly perfect circle. All across the horizon more are clustered in haphazard rows. In the far off distance Hunk can see the Yellow Lion, which is something of a relief. No one had stolen him, at least.

He’s really far away though, obscured and shadowed by the distance that separates them. How long has Hunk been out? How did he get here?

What happened to the rest of his team? Were they still fighting?

Hunk tries to jerk himself free to no avail. The weird glue-rope seems to tighten in response to his efforts. He’s unclothed, unarmed, and unable to free himself from the posts.

Pure panic replaces Hunk’s incredulity and he reflexively struggles further only to accomplish more of nothing. His mouth goes cotton dry, stomach churning with anxiety. He wants to call out in the hope his team might hear, but fear kills the words in his throat.

Because what’s much more likely to hear him is whoever or whatever put him here. They could come back at any moment even without prompting, and there’s nothing Hunk can do about it.

His insides tangle up and clench as he continues the useless struggle for no reason other than the need to do something.

By the time the aliens emerge from the vegetation, he’s panting with effort, glue-rope nearly tight enough to cut off his circulation. They’re all bipedal but reptilian in form with scales and claws and slits for nostrils. Their mandibles overlap their maxillas but they have modest snouts. Their teeth appear to be serrated.

Three of them are dusky orange and at least eight feet tall. The fourth is smaller, around Hunk’s own height, and has a sleeker shape. That one is very bright blue and its teeth are even longer. Inverted spines sprout from its head to its tail like boomerangs. This is an exclusive trait, none of the other ones have spines.

“Hi,” Hunk greets nervously, heart racing in his chest. “Maybe this whole stripping people and tying them up is a custom of yours or something? I mean, you guys are cool right? You’re not Galra and I’m a paladin of Voltron so that’s gotta mean we’re on the same side. Right?”

The blue one cocks its head and rumbles at him. Without the suit-equipped translator Hunk has no idea if it’s language or not. Hunk assumes it’s language when one of the orange ones gestures to him and rumbles some more to the blue one.

The other two orange ones respond with their own distinct sounds and Hunk can’t decide whether this is an encouraging development or not when abruptly, the blue one does something that really freaks him out.

It throws its head back as it begins bouncing in place, and tosses its tongues high up in the air. The orange ones follow suit, a party of tongues flapping toward the skyline. Counting is easy for Hunk when he’s not outright panicking, but not so much when he is, so he can’t place how many each have. At least two. All the tongues move independently of each other, almost like individual limbs. With them all doing it together it nearly looks like a nest of wiggly gray worms.

Hunk feels in the pit of his gut that this is a bad sign. He tries to twist himself off of the poles but the glue-rope digs in deep enough to break skin. Blood seeps out from underneath, welling up fast as he nearly gags on his own dread.

His bleeding gets the aliens’ attention. The blue one steps closer and laps the blood off his ankles with one tongue while it catches the blood on his wrists with the other. Hunk doesn’t think he can feel any more nauseated when it purrs, the sound gravelly but distinguishable in its throat. He recognizes the glint of glee in its eyes.

It’s enjoying the way he tastes and with this realization, Hunk's veins run cold. He is practically a hog skewered on a spit.

“Oh god, oh no, p-please!”

The orange ones gather around and start licking him too. Long gray tongue after long gray tongue slurps over his skin. They feel warm and damp and faintly bumpy. Saliva streaks thick and slick over his flesh as they lap in messy strokes. Beyond the precipice of panic, Hunk pitifully wonders if they like the salt in his sweat.

One tongue swipes over his face and smothers his mouth with a foul, rancid flavor. Hunk sputters, hacking the creature’s saliva out while more of it clumps his eyelashes together. For awhile they just keep licking him, all over, everywhere. Just marinating him in their disgusting spit.

Hunk doesn’t scream. He hiccups and shakes as he continues a useless struggle. He cries, losing track of his tears in the fluid that already coats his cheeks. But he does not scream— not until the blue alien takes the first bite.

It stretches its maw wide and clamps down on his leg. Hunk’s scream tears from his throat nearly inhuman. It isn’t loud enough to mute the significant CRACK of breaking bone. The orange aliens let out pleased rumblings and the blue alien rapidly wrenches its head to the side to rip free a massive portion of his calf.

The sound of that is hideous and wet. Torn tendons fall limp like red noodles and blood gushes down in a plentiful cascade. The pain is delayed but when it hits, it hits like a firestorm and Hunk screams again. The orange aliens make noise with him, seemingly amused. The blue one avidly gobbles up the meat. Hunk watches the bob of its throat as it swallows.

He screams a third time but now it’s a tired volume. He’s dizzy, already lost enough blood to form a pond beneath his butchered calf. The fear that he’s going to die is imminent, urging the breakneck beat of his heart up another pace.

Something utterly revolting happens next. One of the orange creatures spews up over his leg the same gluey, viscous substance that keeps him bound. It spreads the substance over the ragged wound with the tips of its tongues with the ease of spreading jelly over a slice of bread.

It’s doing that because they don’t want him to die, Hunk realizes with horror. They want to eat him alive. Be it because they enjoy the screaming, or the way vitalized meat tastes opposed to dead, these creatures are going to eat him alive.

Hunk's gut lurches and he throws up, acidic chunks of mostly digested breakfast burning his already abused throat. He nearly chokes, belatedly twisting his head to the side. What doesn’t splash on his shoulder splatters on the ground.

One of the orange aliens bends to sniff at the vomit and then, bizarrely, licks it. Hunk’s in too much pain to feel disgusted. It quickly pulls back and hisses something to its companions, evidently displeased. Apparently human vomit is not as tasty as human flesh. The next thing it does is bury its teeth in Hunk’s stomach.

Hunk screams some more, eyes widening until it feels as though they’ll pop out of his skull. The other ones all dig in too, the blue creature going for one thigh and the second orange one claiming another. The third orange one saws its teeth into his side so deep they audibly scrape his ribs.

Hunk’s swept up in an all encompassing mire of agony, unable to do anything but scream and scream as these things feast on him. The first orange one rends a morsel of flesh from his belly with a sound startlingly like shredding fabric. Fat and sinew are shorn haphazardly from his thighs by the second orange and blue one. The third orange one slashes its claws to peel his skin like the rind from a citrus, creating deep furrows all the way down his torso.

It stops just before his groin. Hunk sobs through his screams, trembling violently and gasping for air there doesn’t seem to be enough of. The aliens slather his wounds with their strange, viscid spit up and carrying on chowing down.

Sheer pain and terror scrub out all of Hunk’s coherent thought. There’s nothing but the suffering, everything else is blank.

With a quick twist of its head, the blue one snaps his leg as easily as a carrot stick. It then wraps its tongue around the bone that harpoons up from his skin, slurping off the clinging ligaments. An orange one cranes its head to gnaw on the bone itself, idle as an earthling with a chicken wing. The other two orange ones ravage his torso with their appetite, ripping him up piece by piece. Hunk can see the sodden tatters of brown skin and pink meat hanging over their bloodied jaws.

The blue one must really like the way his thigh tastes. It sinks its mouth into a generous section and wrests it away with a sickening squelch. The blood sprays up in a crimson geyser, painting the blue alien’s scales.

Hunk is too weak to scream at this point, vocal chords run roughshod and lungs as flaccid as deflated balloons in his chest. He does manage a feeble groan. The resurgent threat of death is a primal urgency, an intrinsic fear absent of thought. The orange one with a ribbon of sinew hooked around a long tooth saves the day, spewing a dollop of putrid adhesive on the injury. It then swipes the sinew into its mouth and gulps it down.

This goes on for a torturous eternity. They eat, Hunk bleeds, they spew on it, they eat, Hunk bleeds, they spew on it. Hunk’s vision blurs in and out, the agony grounding him to reality even when he can’t discern the specific places it’s being inflicted after awhile.

Hunk doesn’t notice the other lions landing, doesn’t register the arrival of his team until sounds like yelling and materialized bayards interrupt the pattern of crunching bone and gnashing teeth. There is an implacable stretch of time where he’s not being picked at like a human buffet wherein it really dawns on Hunk that his team is present.

None of it feels real though, not until Keith cuts him free and Shiro cushions the crash down. The jarring landing causes fresh bursts of pain to blast through Hunk’s ravaged body despite his effort. It pulls weak whimpers from his lips and pinpricks of light shimmer in his vision. The pain doesn’t fade away but the pinpricks do and then Hunk sees that everyone is gawking at his maimed form in open horror.

Hunk looks down at himself, a patchwork of ground open meat and protruding bone glazed by gluey alien spew. He turns his head to vomit, regrettably splashes Pidge’s boots, and then falls slack in Shiro’s arms.

* * *

 Hunk wakes up screaming. He hurts before he registers anything else, agony explosive in every cell he possesses.

“Restrain him!” Allura’s yelling and Hunk hears her, he does, but he can’t attribute any meaning to the words.

Everything hurts. Pain is an inescapable riptide, drowning him.

“Because that’s easy!” shouts Pidge and again, he hears words, but he can't connect any context to them.

His injuries are screaming and Hunk just keeps screaming with them.

“You do it,” Keith snaps.

“I’ll hurt him more!” Allura is audibly frazzled.

It’s hard for Hunk to hold onto that observation though. It’s difficult to be aware of anything else when the anguish razes him. It’s all consuming, hot as scorching coals. He feels like he’s being burned to a crisp, cooked extra well done for those reptilian beasts.

“Not as much as he’s going to hurt himself if he doesn’t stop thrashing!” Shiro is trying and failing to hold him down.

It’s unreal, Hunk hadn’t even realized he was struggling. He’s not trying to.

But it hurts.

Lance gives him his hand. This is truly the first thing Hunk feels beyond pain, his friend’s familiar slim fingers and comfortably cool palm. Hunk grasps his hand immediately, terrified that he’s going to lose it if he doesn’t. He doesn’t mean to squeeze.

Lance lets out a sharp yelp.

“Hunk, let go of him!” Keith reaches out like he might try to pry him off.

Lance nudges him back. “No, it’s okay! This is nothing.” His free hand slides over Hunk’s cheek, patting gently. “Hey man, I know it hurts but you gotta hold still.”

Hunk looks to him wildly, trying to process. Shiro has an easier time pressing him to the floor. Floor? Bed? Hunk’s gaze darts around as he tries to make sense of his surroundings. Everything feels disjointed, incongruent.

Did Allura grow taller again?

Coran is next to her, grim and holding something that looks a hell of a lot like a shiny circular saw. Keith is helping Shiro keep him down but Hunk doesn’t think he’s struggling as much anymore. Pidge is just gaping at him, pale as paste with her jaw hanging open.

Hunk doesn’t blame her. He gets a look at himself and keens high in his throat, stomach somersaulting at the wretched sight. He’s been mutilated. Devoured. One leg is absolutely mangled, bone speared through a skinless, pulpy calamity of muscle and splintered fragments nested in a marbly membrane. The other leg is not much better off. The mess of his torso is unnatural and chilling. Torn flesh cradles the glisteningly moist gouges of meat scooped right out of him, visible even under the dense coating of alien spew.

He squeaks out a sob and the noise seems to scare Pidge even more than the sight of him does. She whips her attention to his face and then hurries around, sliding her hands over his eyes.

“Don’t look,” she says shakily.

But Hunk can feel it even if he can’t see it, and feeling it is so, so much worse. Lance pats his cheek again, cups his palm around Hunk’s trembling jaw.

“That gunk is making you sick, man. We have to scrape it off and it’s going to suck but you can squeeze my hand as tight as you need to, okay?” Lance almost sounds like he’s going to start crying, voice breathy and strained.

Hunk intends to tell him something lucid, maybe something grateful, maybe something like don’t cry. He hates it when Lance cries. But all that makes it off his tongue is another thin whimper of pain. Someone kisses his forehead. For a second he thinks it’s Lance but the mouth is too small, the lips are thinner. Pidge. She murmurs something soothing then adjusts her hands without taking them away.

There’s a quiet whirring sound as the scraping commences. It can’t hurt any worse than it already does, it is inconceivable that pain could get any worse than this. But it does.

There’s an excruciating, raw friction as whatever that instrument is shaves away the coagulated alien spew. It doesn’t want to come off easily. Hunk once accidentally superglued his thumb to some plating in a project that wasn’t going well. When nothing would wash it away and he finally had to just rip it off, several layers of skin remained stuck to the plate.

This is that sensation intensified a hundred times over, unyielding, knocking his breath out of his lungs. He can’t stop screaming.

It doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to end. The continuous, dragging friction. The sharp, searing assault of the air against his wounds as they’re exposed bit by bit.

It’s brutal, unbearable anguish. Hunk keeps screaming, even as it leaves him lightheaded, his ribs sticking when he can’t wheeze in enough breath between them.

Eventually he is gagged, his tormented pitches quieted as something is stuffed into his mouth.

“It’s almost over,” Lance promises him.

It sounds like a lie no matter how much Hunk wants to believe it’s true.

How long ago did this process begin anyway?

It feels like hours.

‘Almost over’ is definitely a lie when it feels like it carries on for hours still. Hunk loses track of what hurts where, every agony blending into one discordant cycle. The gag muffles his screams but they’re barely screams anymore anyway. They're miserable mewls at this point. He's not strong enough to scream anymore.

After a eternity, the cycle seems interrupted. None of the pain is fresh. The gag is removed from his mouth, thin tendrils of drool breaking free to drop back to his chin. Pidge’s hands absently wipe his tears away as she uncovers his eyes.

This is when Hunk realizes it’s actually over. Somehow there isn’t any relief.

He just feels gutless. Gutless and boneless like some newly prepared fish. Lance babbles nervous encouragement at him and Hunk can’t really take anything away from that either. He’s just too weak. He barely notices when Coran sticks something in his neck, the infinitesimal pinch buried under everything terrible.

But a crash into darkness follows that up with a loss of feeling, the latter of which is the greatest relief the universe could possibly bless him with.

* * *

 Waking up again is a gentler, but longer affair. Hunk is groggy and his surroundings diffuse a gauzy haze. He feels off and waywardly numb. For a moment he doesn’t understand why he’s in the infirmary and then the memories come rushing back.

Those aliens were gorging themselves on him. Shredding him with vicious teeth and chowing down like no tomorrow.

Hunk whimpers at the thought and Lance startles, quickly shifting in his chair. He cups Hunk’s face with a hand Hunk distantly notices is bandaged.

“Look at me, buddy, are you hurting?” Lance fixes him with a worried stare.

“No? I don’t…I was food,” he whines softly, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. “They were eating me everywhere. It was— I was…I was scared.”

Pidge scoots her chair closer on his opposite side, sucking her lip between her teeth. She curls a hand around his wrist and squeezes gently.

“I know,” Lance murmurs. His features tense, expression darkening. “Don’t worry though. You’re never going to that planet ever again.”

Forget that planet, he’s never going to that galaxy again. It’s unspeakably disturbing. Normally all he thinks to worry about is the Galra. He’s known they’re not the only thing to worry about since running into Rolo’s group, but it’s typically off his radar because the Galra are the primary threat. For all his precaution he never, ever actually expected something like this to happen.

“I hate blood. Saw so much of my blood...way too much of my blood.” Focusing is difficult right now but Hunk tries to focus on Lance’s eyes. Soft, costal blue. The opposite of stark red blood.

“Yeah, that makes two of us.”

“Three,” Pidge corrects quietly. Her eyes are a nice contrast to the red too. Light, caramel brown. Warm.

Lance pets Hunk’s hair while he cries, briefly pressing the back of his hand to his forehead at one point. He sweeps the fringe from Hunk's face and smooths his hair down in slow, comforting strokes. Pidge hums something gentle and melodic under her breath and that helps too.

Eventually Hunk settles. He gives one last sniff and exhales wearily.

“Did I go in the pod?” he asks, partly because he needs to think about something else right now and also because he’s truly obscure on the details.

“Not yet. There was aggressive bacteria in the aliens’ regurgitation—“

“No big words when he’s this out of it, Pidge,” Lance breaks in tiredly. “The alien puke made you sick and you can’t go in the pod until you get kick the sick. But then you can and you'll be fine. Everything's okay.”

“Oh...I don’t feel sick,” Hunk notes quietly.

Pidge and Lance exchange glances.

“Well you’re uh, pretty heavily medicated,” Pidge says, scratching at her head.

“She means you’re high,” Lance tells him. He points to a cyan IV Hunk hadn’t noticed at all.

“High,” Hunk repeats, testing the word. Is that right? He supposes it has to be. He isn’t feeling his injuries in the least (not the physical ones anyway). And reality seems pretty fuzzed around the edges now that he’s actually thinking about it.

“Try to sit up,” Pidge suggests, almost teasingly.

Hunk tries and wow, does that take crazy effort. His back makes it all of a hairsbreadth off the mattress when Pidge gingerly pushes him back down. With one hand no less. One teeny hand attached to one very short arm.

“Whoa,” he mumbles, mildly awed.

“Altean opioids are very potent.” Pidge withdraws her hand.

“I won’t be surprised if you forget this entire conversation,” Lance says as he leans back in his chair and folds one leg over the other.

Hunk blearily squints at his hand, frowning. There’s an elastic bandage wrapped around his palm. His middle and index fingers are taped together too.

“What happened?”

Lance looks to his hand and pauses, the tip of his tongue swiping over his upper lip. “I hurt it while we were saving you,” he says. “It’s not bad though, basically nothing. So y’know, no Altean dope for me.”

“I’ll massage it for you when I’m not high,” Hunk promises.

It seems like Lance’s face does something weird but maybe that’s just Altean dope making reality unreliable. But then he does something he hasn’t done before at all. He firmly presses his lips to Hunk’s temple and there they linger, the gesture far from fleeting.

“Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs, voice thick and breath whispering through Hunk’s hair.

“I want a foot massage,” Pidge pipes in, the pout on her mouth not meeting her eyes. “I have to run twice as fast to keep up with you tall people. It takes a toll.”

“That one won’t be free but we can work something out,” Hunk agrees, suddenly too tired to ask if he’s missing something. “You could trade me one of your space caterpillars.”

“Friends don’t charge friends for— Hey!” Pidge squawks hotly. “I didn’t tell anyone I brought the caterpillars on the ship! You’ve been in my stuff again!”

“Sorry.” Hunk apologizes out of obligation rather than remorse. He can't help himself. Pidge has some really interesting stuff. Out of everybody on the ship, hers is the most fun to riffle through. It's something he almost compliments her on, but he feels heavier than he did a minute ago and it’s getting distracting.

“I want a space caterpillar,” says Lance. “How many do you have?”

Hunk had counted seven. But before he can tell Lance this, he’s passed out again.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear the next thing I post will not be Hunk whump. It'll probably be some Shay fic. Also yes, the aliens tossing their tongues in the air was something I got from the SU episode that's a homage to Wiley Coyote. That corrupted gem that kept just like, tossing her tongues in the air was the cutest thing to me and that is like, easily my favorite filler episode of that show.


End file.
